The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

  By James M. Dorsey A straightforward message emerged from this week’s meeting in the Negev desert of the foreign ministers of four Arab countries, Israel and the United States: Israel is key to the security of Gulf autocracies and continued US engagement in the Middle East. It may be a message that on the surface holds out the promise of reduced regional tension, the beginning of a rejiggering of the region’s security architecture, and the Middle East’s increased ability to fend for itself increasingly. A look under the hood suggests that there may be less to the façade the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, Israel, and the United States are erecting. What emerges from the lifting of the hood is that Gulf states, including the UAE, once described as ‘Little Sparta’ by former US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis because of its military prowess, are unable to defend themselves against external threats despite being among the world’s foremost ...

  By James M. Dorsey Rivals in the Gulf: Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Abdullah Bin Bayyah, and the Qatar-UAE Contest Over the Arab Spring and the Gulf Crisis  (Routledge, 2021) goes to key questions of governance at the heart of developments in the Muslim world. Warren looks at the issue through the lens of two of the foremost Middle Eastern religious protagonists and their backers: Egyptian-born Qatari national Yusuf a Qaradawi, widely seen as advocating an Islamic concept of democracy, and UAE-backed Abdullah Bin Bayyah who legitimizes in religious terms autocratic rule in the UAE as well as the Muslim world at large. In doing so, Warren traces the history of the relationship between the two Islamic legal scholars and their Gulf state sponsors, their influence in shaping and/or legitimizing polices and systems of governance, and their vision of the proper relationship between the ruler and the ruled. He also highlights the development by Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah of new Islam...

  By James M. Dorsey Indonesia has emerged as a primary battleground between democratic and autocratic visions of Islam in the 21st century. The battle pits Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest civil society movement with 90 million followers and powerful ministers in Indonesian President Joko Widodo's cabinet, against Abdullah bin Bayyah, an Abu Dhabi-based, Mauritanian-born religious jurist. Mr. Bin Bayyah, a Sunni Muslim high priest for Middle Eastern autocracy, provides religious legitimisation to the autocratic rulers of the United Arab Emirates. Mr. Widodo risks finding himself in the battle’s crossfire. Although closely associated with Nahdlatul Ulama, Mr. Widodo has agreed to cooperate with the UAE on religious affairs in return for massive Emirati investment in the Southeast Asian archipelago nation. At the heart of the battle between rival theologically packaged visions of governance is the relationship between Islamic clerics and the state. Mr. Bin Bayyah...

By James M. Dorsey Three scantily dressed samba dancers wearing traditional feather headdresses laid bare the limits of social liberalisation in Saud Arabia when they earlier this year danced on the streets of Jizan, a historically conservative city on the border with Yemen. Invited to participate in the Jizan Winter Festival, the dancers, in stark contrast with the traditional, all-covering black robes often worn by Saudi women in public, sported blue coloured feathers that left their legs, arms, and bellies uncovered. Faced with a conservative backlash, Jizan governor, Prince Mohammed bin Nasser, pledged “necessary measures to prevent all (future) abuse." It was not clear what steps Mr. Bin Nasser might take, but his response acknowledged that the rapid pace of change might be just too fast for some in the kingdom. To be sure, the dancer’s garb went beyond the liberalised norms informally laid down by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which no longer require women to cover them...

  By James M. Dorsey The Ukraine crisis may constitute a more impactful, historic watershed than the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall in the mind of Singapore Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is “perhaps even a bigger moment than the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Mr. Balakrishnan said. “We believe we are at an inflection point,” he added. “Little Singapore is standing up for principles and expressing a hope for the rules of engagement for this new era.” In a break with diplomatic tradition, Singapore joined Western nations in sanctioning Russia, the first Southeast Asian nation to do so in the absence of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Mr. Balakrishnan may well be right even if the Berlin wall sparked the end of communism as an ideology rather than a power-driven political system, while Ukraine is likely to take Russia out of the race for global power in an emerging bi- or multipolar world order. Despite the characterisat...

  By James M. Dorsey What did Russian President Vladimir Putin think when he ordered his troops into Ukraine? Ray Charles' 'Georgia on mind’ must have been humming in his head. A slightly altered version, ‘Palestine on my mind,’ was undoubtedly on Egyptian athlete Ali Farag's mind when he condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Sunday as he won Britain’s Optacia squash championship. " We’ve never been allowed to speak about politics in sports , but all of a sudden, it’s allowed. I hope people look at oppression everywhere around the world. Palestinians have been going through that for the past 74 years,” Mr. Farag, the world’s number two player, said in his acceptance remarks. It was Yemen that New York Times sports reporter Tariq Panja thought of when he tweeted as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson prepared to visit Saudi Arabia. Mr. Johnson hopes to persuade the kingdom to increase its oil production to compensate for a loss of access to Russian energ...

  By James M. Dorsey Struggling to remain on the sidelines of the 21 st century’s watershed war in Ukraine, Middle Eastern nations are discovering that they may be fighting their battles with an outdated toolkit. As a result, the Ukraine war could saw off the legs from under the table of Middle Eastern détente that already are built on shaky ground. For the past 18 months, Middle Eastern rivals – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, and Israel – have sought to hedge their bets by diversifying their relationships with major powers, the United States, China, and/or Russia. Increasingly, the rivals are finding out that the Ukraine conflict threatens to narrow their ability to hedge. The conflict has, irrespective of the outcome of the war, reduced not only big power competition to a two- rather than three-horse race but also opened the door to a Cold War-style international relations based on the principle of ‘you are with us or against us.’ Even if...